Panama to Jamaica via Colombia - sailing

 I was pretty lucky, and managed to land a place as crew sailing from Panama to the British Virgin Islands.  It was a yacht delivery (44fty monohull) for an American guy who wanted to cruise up and down the eastern island chain afterwards.  Unpaid position, but all my costs covered, plus a free trip to the Caribbean...

I was one of two crew, plus the skipper/owner, Rick.  The other crew member was Aaron, an ex fast jet (F15) pilot for the US Airforce and now a test pilot.  He is a great bloke, and insanely intelligent (and  minted - he took $730,000 out of Vegas, counting cards, so came to the Caribbean to buy a yacht).  Turns out that by the time we had made it to Jamaica, the skipper; Rick, was a good sailor, but terrible planner, captain, and manager of people.  He also had a pretty intolerable personality.  One minute he was fine, next minute he would flip out over something ridiculous and insignificant.  Aaron said he was bi-polar which didn't go down very well. We had a 'team meeting', Rick 'fired' Aaron for being in-subordinate because he called him incompetant, and told him to get his stuff of the boat in 10 minutes. This left me, the night before we were suppsoed to leave for Haiti, with a decision to make. It wasn't hard - stuck on a boat with an idiot, or fly to St Maarten then the Virgin islands. I told Rick if he found another experienced crew member to join us, and he made some serious changes to the way he did stuff I would stay, if not I wasn't sure I wanted to continue.  I left.  

I enjoyed 3 great weeks of ocean sailing, ate some good food, and got a free ride 820 miles across the Caribbean sea.

Here are some pictures from before my camera broke.

 Finished prepping the boat on the hard at the marina in Colon, Panama and dropped her into the water.

Up the mast sorting out the spreaders.

Dicky - hilarious bloke, partying hard at 73 years young.  There was a halloween party at the marina - Dicky wore an Elvis t-shirt 'because he's dead'.

 Gunter the German waiting for the next song before dropping some moves

 Thats it Gunter.

 Heading out of the mouth of the Panama canal

 Goodbye Marina, hello open ocean.

 This was probably the calmest the sea was the entire time, taken just after sunrise whilst I was on watch.  We steered around the storm cloud. We had some pretty big seas and uncomfortable nights to deal with.  I was sick the first night a few times, but got used to it all after that.

 For a number of reasons, we decided to stop in at Cartagena, Colombia along the way.  Reached there after 2 days, when my camera unfortunately broke.  Land!

Docked in a marina in Cartagena enjoying the sunset and dry, flat land before going into town for beers.

It took 4.5 days of constant sailing and motoring to reach Jamaica. Highlights included: seeing a bird 2 days in, a long way from land. Then getting a visit from a US Airforce plane (flew  towards us, super low, coming from direction of Guantanamo in Cuba Aaron thought, circled us twice then flew back again. Final highlight was a pod of dolphins swimming with the boat for about 10 minutes when we were about 10 miles off of Jamaica.  I was leaning over the front of the bow and they were less than a meter from me. Got sprayed by them.

It was all an incredible experience, and although it finished earlier than expected, it has given me much more time to hang out in Jamaica and see the country, see St Maarten, and kitesurf for longer in the BVIs.